French publishers are currently lobbying for a tax on Google based on the idea "if Google indexes our headlines, they have to pay for it". Apparently, the threat to Google is so serious that Google cofounder Eric Schmidt flew to Paris last week to lobby against such a "link tax".
A Google tax isn't a new idea. A few months ago Al Jazeera reported that German print publications are thinking along the same lines, al... Read more

We already knew smart grids, but highways also have a lot of potential for becoming more sustainable and safer. Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and road construction firm Heijmans have developed a concept to start building 'smart highways'.
They will use techniques such as foto-luminising powder to use the car's beams to illuminate the road, but they also envision techniques for dynamically changing lanes into pr... Read more

Everybody knows the maps that are distorted to reflect some kind of metric. Simon Veksner of the creative advertising blog Scamp had a little too much time on his hand and tried to create a world map where each country's size is determined by the number of Cannes Lions Awards it won, relative to its number of inhabitants.
The result is the map you can see above. The huge country in the center is Belgium. Other Eur... Read more

Big shakeup in Apple leadership: design guru Jony Ive will take on responsibility for everything related to Human Interface, in addition to his work as leader of Industrial Design. He replaces Scott Forstall, a "polarising" manager at Apple, mostly because designers don't like the so called "skeuomorphism" that Forstall was fond of.
An example of skeuomorphism is the fake stitched leather look that Apple has chose... Read more

Giving persuasive presentations to people from other cultures is not easy, as the world of international politics shows us every day. Less than two weeks ago government leaders held an EU Top in Brussels to set up a Eurozone banking monitoring system.
Angela Merkel felt it necessary to step on the breaks by stating 'Quality before speed' in response to François Hollande’s wish to start monitoring as soon as pos... Read more